'The whole government is to blame,' says father who lost 3 kids, wife and sister in Russian mall fire

Six weeks after a catastrophic fire took away everything that was precious to him, Igor Vostrikov can hardly bear to return to his home and see his life as it once was.

It's as if his apartment in the central Russian city of Kemerovo is frozen in time.

"I just want everything to stay where it is. Their smell ... their pillows. All of this that is here," he says of his wife and children.

Kids' coats hang on a rack near the front door. A partially constructed Lego kit spills out on a table in a bedroom. 

Flowers in a vase near the kitchen window have died. Vostrikov gave the bouquet to his wife, Elena, a few days before her 30th birthday.

"I replay what used to be — how I held her, how I kissed her."

Now, in the poor Siberian city of half a million people 3,000 kilometres east of Moscow, Vostrikov tries to channel his anger over a personal tragedy into a more focused vehicle for opposition to corruption in Russia's political system.

Last-minute illness changed family plans

Vostrikov's life changed on the afternoon of March 25. Vostrikov, 31, was skiing with friends a few hours away from his home.

An engineer by training, he had a successful small business supplying shoes to retailers around central Russia.

The trip was supposed to be a family vacation with Elena, his daughter, Anna, 7, and sons Artyom, 5, and Roman, 2. But Roman got sick at the last minute, so with the cottage already booked, Vostrikov went with friends instead.

Back in Kemerovo, Elena met Vostrikov's sister Alyona, who had recently turned 23, and the pair took the kids to see a matinee at the nearby Zimnyaya Vishnya, or Winter Cherry, mall.

Just off the ski slopes and about to head back to Kemerovo, Vostrikov says, he received a panicked phone call from his mother. His wife, sister and three children were trapped in a movie theatre that was quickly filling up with smoke. 

"While my mother was talking to my sister, she could hear the children crying out. It was hysteria, a terrible panic. It was horrid,"  he said.

The mall was on fire. They couldn't get out, and everyone was screaming for help.

'I couldn't hear the children; there were no cries'

As soon as Vostrikov hung up with his mother,  Elena managed to get through to him.

"They already understood that no one was coming to save them," he said, struggling to get the words out.

"I said, 'Cover your face,' but her voice had changed. I couldn't hear the children; there were no cries. That was it. Her final words were, 'Igor, I love you.'"

They already understood that no one was coming to save them.— Igor Vostrikov

In a corner of the burnt-out cinema, firefighters found clothing that matched what one of his sons had worn. Vostrikov says he wants to believe all five died huddled together.

His voice and hands tremble as he tries to suppress his rage. 

"On the fourth floor of the Winter Cherry mall, there wasn't anything to put out a fire. No sprinklers. No water of any kind. How could they let something like this happen? There were so many violations."

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Fire alarms were faulty and didn't go off. The public address system didn't work. Fire exits were blocked.

Victims complained it took firefighters forever to get there, and when they did, many families said their pleas to help victims trapped on the fourth floor were ignored.  

40 children among the dead

The fire killed 60 people, 40 of them children. Most either burned to death or died from smoke inhalation in one of the mall's three cinemas.

"This is a rotten system that we have. It's rotten to the core," Vostrikov told CBC News in Kemerovo.

"I firmly decided right then and there that I am going to change this situation … to do something for Russia so that the death of my loved ones was not for nothing."

While the number of fire fatalities in Russia has been decreasing, the country still has among the worst fire death rates in the world, with 7.5 deaths per 100,000 people. In Canada, for example, the rate is under 0.5 per 100,000 according to the World Health Organization.

In Russia's worst fire, in 2009, 150 people died in a night club in Perm. That one was caused by an unauthorized indoor pyrotechnics display. The investigation determined some construction permits had been obtained fraudulently, and the facility didn't have proper fire escapes.

'Every civil servant treats people like dirt'

The day after the Kemerovo fire, microphone in hand, Vostrikov was at the forefront of a huge demonstration of several thousand people in the city's main plaza.

Having gone without sleep and racked by grief, he accused the entire Russian government from President Vladimir Putin on down of perpetuating a system of bribery and payoffs that put citizens' lives at risk. Putin's new six-year term as president, his fourth, officially begins Monday.

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"Our children will never come back!" Vostrikov screamed at the protest. "We need absolute justice. In my opinion, the whole government is to blame."

The crowd screamed "Killers" and demanded "Truth!"

Later on VKontakte, a Russian version of Facebook, Vostrikov went further, taking aim at the president himself.

"The ruling regime is to blame," he wrote. "Every official dreams of stealing like Putin. Every civil servant treats people like dirt."

In the days after the tragedy, a visibly angry Putin visited Kemerovo, where cameras showed him lambasting local officials. The long-ruling regional governor was fired.

However, Putin did not meet with any relatives of the dead. State media avoided coverage of the protests. Instead, Kremlin-friendly commentators blamed anti-Russian "Ukrainian" instigators for causing trouble.

In this, and most similar tragedies, the government narrative portrays Putin as a well-meaning leader who is constantly let down by those who work for him.

Asked now about what he wrote about Putin and whether he regrets his words, Vostrikov refuses to pull back.

"It's a fact," he says. "It's his circle that steals, and he lets them do it."

'High-ranking' officials blamed

Vostrikov says offering and receiving bribes to reduce costs is too often viewed as a legitimate practice in Russia.

The official investigation by Russia's Investigative Committee, the federal agency responsible for criminal prosecutions, cites "corruption" as one of its main avenues of investigation.

The independent Russian business daily Kommersant quoted Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the agency, as saying "high-ranking" local officials in the city obstructed inspections and prevented safety procedures from being tested. 

Bastrykin did not name the officials.

Eight people have been arrested, including the head of the fire department and the senior government official in charge of safety inspections for the mall. The other six were involved in installing, maintaining and testing systems such as alarms and sprinklers.

The fire in Kemerovo triggered a sweeping crackdown on mall safety across Russia, with alarming revelations. The prosecutor's office reported that a check of every shopping and entertainment complex in the country revealed half were in violation of fire safety requirements, sparking hundreds of legal proceedings.

200,000 Instagram followers

Since the protest in the square, Vostrikov has tried to channel his anger into a more focused vehicle for opposition.

With no background in politics, he's thrown himself into the role of organizer, leaning heavily on social media to recruit people for a new political movement he's calling Word of the People.

Rather than starting a political party, Vostrikov says, the goal is to gather like-minded people to push for new laws and accountability so corrupt politicians and bureaucrats will be fearful to return to their old practices.

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In a video posting, he said Russians need to feel like they are safe in the places they work and visit. "All the money is going to defence, to help Syria. We need to fix our problems at home."

Whether out of empathy, curiosity or even pity, many Russians are responding.

Vostrikov's Instagram feed has exploded to 200,000 followers. He's also formed a small team of organizers and has travelled to Moscow to recruit more experienced political hands.

At the still-growing memorial of toys and flowers next to the Winter Cherry mall, many who drop by say they know about Vostrikov and support what he's doing.

Alexander Bolderev, a driver for a health clinic in the city of Novosibirsk 300 kilometres away stopped by to pay his respects to those who died.

"I support Igor in his movement, and I follow his posts," he told CBC News. "I hope he will discover the truth." 

Janna Folova from Kemerovo said she, too, is aware of Vostrikov's loss and his attempt to find meaning in it.

"I think we need to change our laws," she said. "The authorities have no choice. People will not accept it."

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In Putin's Russia, however, anyone who challenges the president so directly is viewed as a threat — even someone who's lost their whole family.   

In the days after the fire, many of those in Kemerovo protesting for change were derided as being put up to it by Americans. Others were simply dismissed as troublemakers.

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In an exchange caught by TV cameras, the city's deputy governor accused Vostrikov of being a "publicity seeker," though he apologized after he learned the full story.

Online, the trolling has been unrelenting.

It's not possible to do politics on the blood of a tragedy.- Evgeny Evgenovich, Kemerovo pensioner

One recent post on Vostrikov's Russian Facebook page is typical of hundreds: "Your social network site should read, 'My life after my kids burned to death' — soon you will need your own PR manager, and you will start advertising for money."

Vostrikov said, "Some people have started an information war against me. They put old photos of me with my family and say, 'See, he's on holiday with his family.' It's a nightmare."

Even at the memorial, where there are photos of Vostrikov's five dead family members among the flowers, there were those who questioned his motives.

"It's not possible to do politics on the blood of a tragedy," said Kemerovo pensioner Evgeny Evgenovich.

He repeated the oft-mentioned Kremlin talking point that people who stage protests will cause chaos and revolutions.

"He'll destroy the country. And what next? He didn't choose the right place or right time or motives for his politics."

The idea that those who push for political change are a destabilizing force bad for Russia and must be resisted is a familiar refrain that can be found in regime-friendly media and other organs of state propaganda.

Far from Moscow, facing long odds

Kemerovo's resource industries are in decline. It's also a long way from the power structures of Moscow.

Vostrikov accepts he's facing long odds to make a difference, but with such a gaping void in his life and a desperate need to keep his mind occupied, he says he is determined to push ahead.

"At the moment, I think of myself as a doomed person," he said.

"This is the only thing I see myself doing at the moment. I made an agreement with myself that if, for some reason, I don't make it, it just means I will be that much sooner closer to my family. This is what is driving me now."